we shall mutually perish in dignity
by Shiluette
Summary: Yukiryo. Yukimura-centric. Seiichi only knows the language of winning, and that is all he has to offer to Echizen.


A/N: Dug this out from my usb. Sometimes I don't know whether my writing style changed or I just crank out batshitty characters after another.

Dark and creepy! Yukimura. Because I'm trying to work up my characterizations for dark! Keigo and it clearly isn't working to my content, so Seiichi gets the blame for it.

Warning: There's the lovely Seiichi version that coos at plants and throws nice little smiles at Sanada while dressed up in a green hospital gown. Or maybe the version that implies Seiichi is a softy under all that ice. This fic is not about that Yukimura. This Yukimura Seiichi is fucked up and deranged and batshit crazy. And I'm not even going to plant that as OoC because in my mind Yukimura is that kind of person. Even his love for plants creep me out. I love him and everything (erm, no I don't, not reaaally), but still. He's crazy.

Dubcon, past mentions of rape, manipulation, YUKIMURA.

/

/

In the hospital, he whispers a mantra.

Rikkai, win, win Rikkai. Always win, Rikkai. He scratches the white walls of his wards until his nails chip off, he imagines the walls burning down around him, he struggles to lift his tray with one finger.

"Yukimura-kun, not again," the nurse tsks, but she falters when he gives her a tight little grin, his index finger shaking from the cool metal pressure, his blunt nails chipped with dried blood.

"I'm fine," he says, because he is, because he needs to.

/

Sanada made a good vice-captain and he makes a tolerable captain. He comes by every day to drop off reports but he doesn't care about any of that, just the wins, no losses, not even a point.

"I understand, Yukimura," Sanada says solemnly, as if he actually does, and he catches himself in the right moment _, don't be daft Sanada, you never will._ Sanada never notices the right things, of how he grows thinner and wilder, but only the things he wants to see, like the way Seiichi's grip on the bed sheets does not falter anymore.

Yanagi always looks away when Sanada says that, almost as if he knows what he's thinking of, but that must be his paranoia speaking. Seiichi pauses for a deliberate moment, and curves his lips up, amusement schooled on his face. "I'm glad you do," he replies easily, and he allows warmth to shine into his eyes, even though his heart is cold, barren, weak. Still so weak a steady _thumpthump._

Sanada quirks his Sanadalike smile back at him, and he nods to Yanagi. "I brought you something," he says, and a moment later inside his duffel bag out comes out his old racket.

Seiichi makes sure his smile is frozen on his face.

 _Thwack thwack thwack goes the ball and suddenly he can't breathe and he needs to win but damn his lungs damn his tremors_

"That's…that's thoughtful of you," he manages, "Thank you." The walls, let them burn with his rage, let the sweat from his body flow until he is left gasping.

"To remind yourself what you're fighting for," Sanada says gravely, and Seiichi almost goes at him, _I already know what I'm fighting for, I would even die for it, do you understand that?_

His lips are like plaster, failing to wipe of the smile that means nothing.

/

The next time Sanada mentions Rikkai, Yanagi isn't there to give him knowing glances and Yukimura snaps at him, "I don't care! Don't mention tennis to me!"

Sanada's look wavers, he wants to touch him, Seiichi can tell, and Seiichi snarls at him.

"Nothing," he says harshly, "Is going to make anything better. _Go,_ Sanada."

Sanada leaves.

/

He walks when the doctor allows him to sit up, he does 10 push-ups when the doctor advises him to walk ten steps. The nurses frown and protest, but all he can conjure up is a bland smile, _really I'm fine, this is all fine_. But it really isn't, and he legs are shaking by the time he forces himself to run.

"This isn't safe, Yukimura-kun," the nurses say tersely, worried, they would like to think, but undoubtedly they're irritated because he's pushing himself, "You're worrying us."

He nods, docile and meek, but when they go away he marks off the dates one by one, until the Nationals. He traces the dents on the hospital walls but pointedly ignores his racket, perched on the windowsill where he could choose to see it every day if he wished to.

He looks into the mirror and sees his eyes burn and he smiles.

/

They lose the Kanto finals and Sanada is the one to bring him the news.

"You lost," he says, tasting the words on his mouth, and it is a bitter feeling, ashes and rubble and failure, defeat, loss, "You lost to a rookie. It wasn't even _Tezuka_." Tezuka would be off in rehabilitation, and there was a runt amidst the amateur players that Seiichi defines as Seigaku.

Saanda looks away, and he sees a dark bruise on the side of his cheek. _Good_ , Seiichi thinks darkly, _I hope he beat himself to death. I hope he groveled and begged, I hope he never stands up again._ Because this is unforgivable, it's blasphemy.

"He was good, Yukimura," Sanada says quietly, "I think you should know that. You'll be the one to play him next."

He heaves a sharp breath and looks at Sanada; if he were a lesser man he would have recoiled at the fire shimmering in Seiichi's eyes. But Sanada stands erect, even if his eyes hold uncertainty and weariness.

"When I play him," he says in a soft whisper, "I'll rip out his senses, one by one." And that is a promise, he intends to stick to it, make this boy obscure and blind. He will make Seigaku tremble.

He turns away and clenches his hands into the sheets tighter until he sees white. "Go. I don't want to see you until I get out of here."

/

His senses, his tennis.

Not even Sanada knows how he succeeded in the impossible. He will only revere it until the day he dies, or worse yet, until he forgets.

He wonders if Yanagi would know.

/

The boy is good; he sees that match that Yanagi brings him, now that Sanada was gone. The first five points are pathetic, but once the boy smirks, a slow curl of lips and fire spitting out of his hazel eyes, he sees the triumph elation of a fool that never knew how to lose.

The boy hits another close shot and his stupid cap falls to the ground; he takes no notice, his face on the cracking screen is sharp with tension (nervous strain, so the boy _was_ afraid of the Emperor after all, Seiichi notes) and his hands are steady as he serves his trite serve.

He knows the results, yet he can't help but think. _Sanada you fool_ , he thinks, _you lost because you couldn't bear to crush out a blossoming talent, but I have no such qualms._

He already sees the boy's eyes, hazed and goggled, those lanky arms slack. He sees the boy falling, knees strutted out first, and his torso crashing after. He sees those eyes close and those lips, opening for a wordless scream and the referee giving him a sharp look before disqualifying the boy.

He imagines darkness for the boy and wills destruction.

/

His dreams in the hospital are erratic. It's the white walls, Seiichi is sure. It's too silent in this area of Kanagawa, he could hear voices bouncing around his head.

/

Rikkai was something even before he came to the school. He was lanky for his age, his teachers told him, but he made up for his fragility by staring people down.

 _You have cold eyes, Seiichi_ , peers told him, before his name became a surname and the whispers became null.

He had applied for the tennis team without a moment's given thought; it was, after all, what he was known for. Seiichi the tennis genius, you have a bright future ahead of you, my dear boy. Your tennis is beautiful, it is almost destructive with its perfection.

His older peers thought differently.

/

"Spread your legs, little Seiichi," voices say to him, and they carefully take him apart and put him back together again. He tries to scream but his mouth is gagged and he wouldn't dare cry.

"Moan for us, little Seiichi," they coo, and Seiichi wants to spit at them. The locker room stinks of sweat and hormones, and now it'll soon be filled with more sweat and the room, the small room is full of gasps and moans and jeers, _do you want to say something Seiichi? Do you want the gag off? Do you want to beg?_

A tennis ball rolls near his right hand, and he grabs at it before it could roll away further. He grips it tighter as they shove inside him, his palm curving like the ball, the ball, solid and real and hard.

He closes his eyes and shuts the sounds out. They stroke his cheek, sweaty palms and dirt smearing across his pale skin, and when he doesn't struggle they laugh and laugh some more. _He's enjoying this, look at him, wanton and moaning!_

"Oh, Seiichi," one of them sneers, "You think you can be some hotshot tennis star with your freak skills. That's not enough, do you see?"

He imagines a court: grey cement, solid rackets, and the satisfying hit of the ball as they fall beneath him. As he becomes great and they become nothing.

He bites around the gag harder and wills himself to be deaf.

/

He wakes up. He opens his mouth to curse, but he remembers: they are long gone, he had defeated them all as the year passed, they crumbled beneath his feet.

He had them to thank. I dedicate my tennis to you, my dear, dear senpais, he mocks inside his brain, as he rewinds his sharp serves, his airy returns. They all fell panting and glowing, their faces contorted with confusion and hopelessness. Despair, I gave them despair and I would have crippled them. I would have killed them.

The relish of remembering their blank, blinded eyes as he aimed a tennis ball at their faces is enough to make him close his mouth again and listen.

Crickets chirp outside his window.

/

Echizen is a boy full of cockshit, and Seiichi wishes he would come to Rikkai so Seiichi could cut him apart and piece him together bit by bit, only to rip apart the seams again and make the boy cry.

When the boy jeers, _isn't tennis fun?_ with that cocky accent and shitful attitude, Seiichi wants to fly across the net and grab hold of him _, boy, do you know what I sacrificed in the name of tennis tennis can't be fun it's made to be conquered_ , but the boy is too far away and Seiichi takes a perverse pride in hitting back the split two balls that the boy throws at him.

He loses, because his life always fucked him up that way and he's resigned to it by now.

/

Sanada hands him a towel. His eyes reach out to him, _I understand, Yukimura._

Seiichi gives him his tight smile response. _Do you now?_

/

He walks up to the net; the boy is there, waiting to shake hands.

Naïve a boy, still thinking a good match deserves a finale.

The boy's hand is cold. So he was afraid of him. Seiichi thinks he should feel honored.

"Your tennis is good," the boy imparts as they go their separate ways, "But it's way to go before it can be great."

 _And when did you suddenly become the epitome of tennis, boy?_ But Seiichi is too tired to snap.

/

He runs into the boy after his post-treatment. His nerves are now fine, his sense are fine. It's his mind that's whirling around and grasping on a concept he never knew.

The boy is still young, his eyes wide and curiously innocent. He blinks and starts, says his name. "Yukimura-san," he says in that voice that has yet to harden. It is not coarse, not the voice in his dreams. But Seiichi hates him in a different way, he hates him as he wants to crush him.

He is momentarily terrified. He wants to see the boy's face as his face must have in the dark tennis room, all those years back.

He nods but fails to smile. "Echizen-kun." He will be cordial, he will be aloof. He will walk past this boy but the boy will stop him, this much he knows.

And so he does; Echizen, the cocky brat he is, smirks and his eyes gleam. He does not mention the hospital behind them looming like an omen. "If you're not busy, how about a match?" he says, and Seiichi smiles and complies.

/

Later, after a half-heated attempt at a match.

He presses the boy up against the wall and breathes on him, and he is evoked in a perverse pleasure of a memory trip lane, and he smiles at the boy, "Aren't you afraid?"

The boy's eyes light and it is simply wicked the way he smirks back. "Should I be?" he asks, and that makes Seiichi lean down and kiss him until he tastes blood.

/

The days fly after meeting the boy again. They meet after hospital treatments and he never goes to other places. They play tennis and stare at each other and he lunges and they scrabble and bite each other. Seiichi watches his nails carve blood upon the boy's pale skin and wants blood.

"You should come to Rikkai," Seiichi says, tracing down a hand across the boy's bare chest. He moves his lips against the boy's navel and hears a hiss from above. "All that potential. You could hone it as a weapon."

"I like tennis," the boy replies lazily, "Don't need it for ammunition."

"I could create a warzone for you," Seiichi says pleasantly, and yanks off the boy's pants. Echizen laughs breathlessly.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" he says, but gasps when Seiichi grips those thighs hard enough to bruise and presses his lips against a knee.

"I could make you like me," Seiichi says, and he doesn't know if that's a promise or a threat.

"Or," the impudent boy whispers, "I could make you like me." That certainly is a promise. Seiichi smiles at him grimly.

But he does not want to fuck the boy. He does not want, strangely enough, to make the boy grasp at a tennis boy and squeeze his eyes shut. He wants those eyes open and hollow and he wants those eyes to look at him, revere him before they deaden out.

How trite, he thinks. He only craves dominance.

/

When Seiichi hands over the lotion instead of applying his own fingers, he says, "I have a safeword."

The boy frowns at him. "Safeword?" he repeats. It's just sex, the boy seems to say.

(But it's not. It's about power and dominance, it is about control, it is about winning. Those are the languages that the boy knows and what Seiichi knows how to convey.)

Seiichi smiles grimly and traces a line across the boy's skinny arms. "When I say Genichiro," he intones softly, "I want you to stop."

"Genichi—" Echizen stops and takes a step back, narrowing his eyes. "Sanada," he says flatly. His hazel eyes are diluted not from lust but anger.

"It's my safeword," he says dismissively.

"It's a name," the boy snaps.

Seiichi's lips curve wider. "Are we jealous now?" he asks, amused, and the boy freezes, how fun, the way the boy will dance to his tunes, _are we having fun now, boy?_

Echizen glares at him and Seiichi expects him to storm off and sulk like the child he is. But the boy recovers (don't you always, standing up with your knobby knees, such determination, such pride, such wasted energy) and he quirks a cold smile of his own. "Fine," he agrees and uncaps the lotion. He smears a generous amount of the liquid in his hands and raises an eyebrow at him. "On your knees, then."

Seiichi laughs softly and turns around.

/

Echizen is slow, he is soft. Of all the things, Seiichi did not expect this of him.

His finger burns. Another one comes in and Seiichi is soon commanding himself.

Be deaf, he thinks, be blind. Do not feel.

But Echizen is not leery and he does not shove and most disappointingly, he is not rough and barbaric. He is careful, almost afraid, and Seiichi soon snaps, "Harder, boy, or I'll be the one to do it to you."

Echizen stops, and this is when he shoves, good, and Echizen becomes rough and Seiichi is almost, almost delighted.

The boy leans into his ears and he tenses.

He is about to murmur a name. "Kunimi-"

Seiichi doesn't let him finish, his snarl on the tip of his tongue before he even knows it, a bare animal instinct, before he twists back and shoves the boy off violently. The boy's eyes are full of mirth.

"Tezuka," he spits out, and the boy sneers at him.

"It's my _safeword_ ," he drawls out harshly. But Seiichi is upon him, his teeth drawn and lips twisting, and he grabs the bottle of lotion and throws off the cap against the far end of the wall. He squirts out a handful on his hands and shoves the boy down to the ground. The boy's eyes flicker.

"Wait," he boy begins, but he doesn't get to end his sentence because Seiichi has him pinned and his hand is going between the boy's legs; his hand pressed down against the boy's chest the other moving, preparing the boy with deliberately sharp fingers

And all the while the boy is strangely silent and unmoving, except to lift his hips (a movement that Seiichi sharply retaliates by pushing him down again) and his eyes burn into Seiichi's face and his mouth is closed his cheeks are flushed and he is beautiful, beautiful.

Seiichi growls and strokes himself a few more times and without any more preparation, he shoves.

The boy tries to arch back but Seiichi presses him down while he fucks the boy in shallow, rough thrusts, his back perfectly coordinated against the hard cement floor and his legs splayed wider and wider.

 _Do you like this Seiichi? Do you like this better than beating the shit out of us one by one?_

 _We're going to teach you a lesson now, first year prodigy, wonderful Seiichi. Don't you dare look away._

He gasps as he digs the boy's skin and the boy doesn't take his eyes away; Seiichi leans closer until his forehead is touching the boy's own.

The boy finally opens his mouth. "You'll never be Sanada and you'll never come close to Tezuka," he says between the rough thrusts Seiichi gives him, "But that's what you want, isn't it?"

Seiichi spits at him and the boy laughs, brittle and mocking.

/

Another time, he has Echizen on his knees and his fingers are tightly grasping the locks of Echizen's hair. Echizen does not grimace at the pain.

"When I see the court, I see a battlefield," Seiichi hisses to the boy, fingers digging hard, eyes wide. Yes, he knows how he looks like, knows how he might sound, but god. This boy

This is all he has, this is all he ever had.

Echizen looks at him, really looks at him. His face is unreadable and carefully blank.

"When I see the court," the boy whispers back, "I only see the game. Maybe you should too."

Seiichi shoves him, hard. The boy staggers but does not fall.

Seiichi hisses, "Don't act noble. Is that what Tezuka taught you?"

Echizen smiles and Seiichi feels his heart stop.

"Maybe it's what you taught me," he says softly.

"I never-" Seiichi starts, but Echizen's next words cut through him and he is immobilized.

"I don't want to be like you," the boy says calmly, and it hurts that the boy is not mocking, is not jesting in vile fun. He is quiet in his sincerity. "I don't think you want that too."

The voices in his head. They will never go away and he cannot escape them.

/

When the boy leaves off to America, he doesn't say goodbye, but Seiichi locks himself up in his room and sends a text anyway.

 _I hope you never return._

It's the closest he will to make a confession.


End file.
